“And Zolner followed her line of sight,” Quinn said. “Listen. Forget about her and scoot back around here to help me. Be careful you don’t bump my arm. This cold is making me shaky enough as it is.”
“Got it,” she said, giving him a thumbs up.
“And if you don’t like math you’re gonna have to suck it up, because I guarantee you he’s doing some pretty heavy calculating right now.”
Beaudine lowered the binoculars long enough to rub her eyes before raising them again. She gasped at what she saw. “I think he’s got us!”
Quinn took a deep breath, settling deeper into the freezing muck and willing his body not to shiver.
“Okay,” he said. “Here we go. It’s simple addition and subtraction for a firing solution from this point — and the last one to get the right answer wins a bullet.”
Quinn consulted the recorded figures in the notebook, adding and subtracting clicks in elevation and windage on the numbered turrets of the scope as he worked through the variables of bullet drop, ambient temperature, air pressure, wind, bullet spin, and even the rotation of the earth. It took time, but at eight tenths of a mile, small mistakes meant big misses. Outgunned and in the open, Quinn knew he would have one chance to get things right.
“Not tryin’ to make you nervous,” Beaudine said. “But you better hurry up. This guy is up to somethin’.”
A distinct crack slapped the ATV thirty meters to the left of where they lay in the snow — followed two seconds later by a hollow boom.
“Quinn!” Beaudine’s voice rose in pitch and timbre. “He just shot our ride.”
“He’s going to be on us fast.” Quinn took a quick glance through the scope, and then scrambled to finish the last of his calculations. “When I say move, don’t ask why, just follow my lead. Fast.”
Chapter 53
Zolner fired once at the ATV knowing his shot was on target as soon as he pulled the trigger. The vehicle’s motor was still warm, and the stark white heat signature was easy to locate through the FLIR thermal imager. Rolling slightly away from the gun, he pressed the rubberized binocular skirt of the device to his eyes and began to scan again. Snow showed up like a negative image in the viewfinder, with things that were cold displayed as dark gray or black.
“Nice try,” he muttered to himself in English when he found the shining white blobs of two human heads and shoulders. They thought to conceal themselves with camouflage. Zolner’s heart-rate quickened when he saw they had a rifle and it was pointed directly at him. This was interesting indeed.
He’d ranged Volodin and the girl at 1810 meters, but whoever was following them looked to be considerably closer. Exchanging the FLIR for a laser, he ranged the other shooter at 1326 meters. He set the rangefinder on his pack and rolled in behind the CheyTac again. With careful deliberation, he began to make the minor adjustments from his shot at the ATV. At this distance the solid copper projectile would drop over 1200 centimeters and take almost two full seconds before impact. It was not a particularly difficult shot, but a great deal could happen in two seconds.
Chapter 54
Colonel Rostov sat on the edge of the tarmac in the backseat of Lodygin’s boxy black ZiL 41047. He’d been so concerned about putting the gas mask on when he arrived he hadn’t taken the time to notice the car for what it was. A staff limousine before the captain had commandeered it from the back of a lonely fleet-storage lot outside Moscow, the teak trim had long since faded. Dark stains stood out against the tired beige leather. The scuffs of three decades of use by Soviet generals — and judging from the footprints on the ceiling, at least one general’s acrobatic mistress — scarred the inside of the creaky sedan. Rostov toyed with a mark in the carpeting with the toe of his shoe and discovered it looked very much like a bullet hole. Exhausted, he fell back in his seat and closed his eyes, resting his hands on his belly. If scabby carpet and sagging leather could talk, there would certainly be some stories in this car.
Outside the ZiL, a cold gray wind blew in from the sea, buffeting the sedan. Bits of trash and gravel skittered across the broken pavement of the dilapidated airport. Rostov listened to the moaning wind and pulled his wool coat up around his ears. He leaned forward, telling the driver to turn up the heat. The slender conscript glanced in the rearview mirror and nodded, never quite making eye contact. A little conversation would have warmed the car, but officers did not speak with conscripts.
Bundled in his greatcoat, Rostov turned to stare past his reflection in the window at the lights of the approaching Cessna business jet used by General Zhestakova. His knee began to bounce spontaneously as the plane touched down. The driver, noticing the movement, glanced in the rearview mirror again, and then looked quickly away.
Rostov was not by nature a nervous man, but emissaries from the director of GRU did not come to lounge around the samovar and chat of world affairs over a tea and jam. When General Zhestakova sent an envoy, any message was most often given in what the Americans called “Blunt Force Trauma.” Rostov knew this all too well. He had delivered many such messages as a young operative of GRU.
Rostov waited for the Cessna to roll to a stop and the turbofans to go quiet before stepping out of the ZiL. He stood in the wind with his hands folded in front of him, Astrakhan wool hat pulled down low over his ears. He did not have long to wait for the aircraft door to open.
Rostov’s heart calmed when he saw the emissary was a woman. A redhead, which could certainly pose a problem, but still a woman — so all was not completely lost. At least Zhestakova had not sent someone to break his legs or throw him out a window.
“FSB,“ the young woman said when she reached the sedan. “Aleksandra Kanatova.”
So that was the game, Rostov thought. The general had sent someone from his brother-in-law’s side of the house to test the waters before doing anything rash. This one was small, shorter even than his teenaged daughter and fully a foot shorter than him. Rich mahogany red hair hung in shoulder length curls from beneath her blue fox ushanka, in stark contrast to the crisp white of her down ski jacket. An alluring crop of freckles splashed across a button nose. Golden green eyes gleamed with an intensity that surprised even Rostov, who was surprised by little, least of all women. He wondered if they might not even enjoy their time together in Providenya.
“I am told there is a girl with information about the Black Hundreds,” Kanatova said, getting straight to the heart of her visit.
Rostov nodded toward the Cessna. “You have no luggage?”
“This only,” Kanatova said, holding up a brown cardboard file folder.
Rostov held open the door to the backseat of the ZiL. “We must get you out of the wind, my dear,” he said.
Kanatova smiled as if grateful for the chivalry. “What you must do, Colonel, is take me to this young woman. I wish to question her at once.”
The population on the dilapidated base was purposely kept small, with little movement outside prescribed times when American satellites were not passing overhead. Most of the buildings were vacant, so the handful of officers and senior enlisted men had their pick of quarters.
Captain Lodygin had chosen the wing of a deserted barracks at the back of the compound.
“This is the confinement area?” Kanatova said, nodded her head as she got out of the sedan.